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December 31, 2004

Colorado man, Alek Komarnitsky's, managed to fool the world's press agencies, by suggesting that surfers to his website could control the Christmas lights on his home.

The story was initially picked up by local press - including several Colarado TV stations - before being reported online by Slashdot, the New York Times, and even appeared on Google News.

However, Alek Komarnitsky later confessed the story was a fraud, intended to help draw attention to paid advertising for local lighting firms placed on his site.

The story is covered pretty comprehensively b Gary Price at SEW here: Christmas Lights, Hoaxes, and Google Ads.

Posted at 01:35 PM
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While the web continues to wonder if Google Suggest actually means anything of importance, Micah Dubinko in Web search, without the web points to an application of his on XForms site that allows similar action with a preloaded Javascript enabled dataset at: Xfi.

The page contains a search box, that will show as you type any pages that contain the relevant term - all activated entirely in Javascript.

The search is currently limited to the O'Reilly book "XForms Essentials", but neatly shows how specific site data can be used for search purposes.

Posted at 01:26 PM
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In a move that sees Microsoft's proprietary Microsoft NET passport left for use only on its own sites, and those of close partners, online retail giant ebay has disallowed access via the service.

Announcing that it would no longer be allowing users to sign in with a Microsoft Passport, users of eBay will only be able to use their eBay login.

According to eBay, support for Microsoft passport will be dropped in late January.

The move effectively announces the failure of Microsoft to fulfill it's vision of using the Microsoft NET Passport a central feature of personal and financial information on the internet.

Aside from privacy concerns and technical glitches, the revelations last year that the data acquired was not even securely stored has helped move companies away from utilising the service.

Posted at 12:59 PM
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Wordpress, an already established name in blogging software, is turning it's sights on community forum software, with the development of bbpress.

According to their current frontpage introduction:

bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed. Most software in this space is focused on features like avatars or file attachment and if that's what you're interested in, bbPress probably isn't for you. We're focused on keeping things as small and light as possible for the explicit purpose of creating a community around support.

However, as most of the larger forum software developments are already W3C compliant to at least transistional XHTML, and as most modern webmasters are used to the extensive features offered by developers such as vBulletin, phpbb, and IPB, it ermains to be seen what bbpress can actually offer.

After all, the major forum software brands developed their extensive range of additional forum features precisely to cater to the demands of users and webmasters, who sought to personalise and extend their community experience.

How bbpress expects to be able to successfully turn the clock back to a time when forum software was expected to deliver much less, and successfully deliver this, remains an interesting experiment. So far it is difficult to see how offering less will make the product attractive in what is an already demanding market.

Posted at 12:50 PM
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Today is the last day that Microsoft will officially offer support for the Windows NT 4.0 server platform.

A operating system 11 years in use, patches and updates for Windows NT will no longer be publicly released after midnight tonight, having already had a year-long reprieve after original plans sought to end support for NT 4.0 last year.

However, although Microsoft expects most customers to have moved to updated operating systems, there are still safeguards in place for coporate users. According to Internetnews.com: Windows NT 4.0 Support Ends New Year's Eve:

"In response to Windows NT Server 4.0 customers who face large scale migrations and have asked for support while completing an upgrade, Microsoft has designed a fee-based custom support program that will run through Dec. 31, 2006," a Microsoft spokesperson explained to internetnews.com.

"Additionally, Exchange Server 5.5 will follow this policy, by offering a full two years of fee-based custom support after extended product support for Exchange Server 5.5 ends on Dec. 31, 2005.

Posted at 12:44 PM
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Anti-spam company MX Logic reports that the current US legislation against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) - also known as the Can-spam act - has so far failed to halt the amount of spam actually sent out from within the US.

According to the report: Can-Spam didn't, survey says

"The Can-Spam law has been in place for a year now, and according to our studies we've seen very little compliance," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer of MX Logic in Denver. "The real benefit of Can-Spam is to the service providers, giving them the ability to go after those who send spam."

Security company Sophos last week also reported that the US remains the main source of spam e-mails, responsible for a staggering 42% of all spam sent, as reported in U.S. leads the dirty dozen spammers.

Posted at 12:37 PM
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The battle to be the dominant format in the next generation of DVD technology gets fiercer.

In a format war reminiscent of the video battle between betamax and VHS, two opposed technologies: Blue-ray, and High Definition DVD (HD DVD) are both poised to continue the DVD market to the next level.

However, as with video, confusion over which is the better format to buy in for the long-term presents problems for consumers, who are likely to be scared off from investing in a format that could be dead within 5 years.

To help push the battle lines closer to home, JVC have unveiled a new disc that combines Blu-ray technology with standard DVD technology, producing a hybrid that can deliver 33.5 GBs of usable space.

This continues to help push Blue-ray into a favoured position, especially if consumers could move seamlessly into the new technology.

Posted at 12:30 PM
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The convergence of PC and TV technology means that it is inevitable that one day the distinction between the two will be non-existent, with a combined device ni the home eventually functioning as both a TV and PC.

However, as the world of internet TV gathers attention and so long as the distinction exists, consumers currently need to find ways in which to send high quality digital media to their TVs - and the challenge is a surprising one.

In Playing Net movies on your TV, CNet writers Evan Hansen and Richard Shim cover the digital challenges facing this issue, and ultimately are left examining that last bridge before the PC and the TV truly converge as one device.

Posted at 12:24 PM
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December 30, 2004

Despite a multi-billion dollar repair bill for the Indian Ocean earthquake, whose Tsunamis destroyed resorts and coastal assets across at least ten countries and killed at least 100,000 people, Asian stock markets continued upward surges.

Stock exchanges in India and Indonesia - two countries particularly affected - broke records in what has been a rich year for share prices.

Even Sri Lanka, particularly badly hit, even a loss of 5% on its stock markets still leaves share prices 40% higher than at the start of 2004.

So far traders and investors in Asian markets appear to be reasoning that many resorts were in developing areas, so no major economic centers nor essential national infrastructure have been lost. And even short-term loss of tourist spending in the worst affected areas is expected to be offset by major government investments in construction projects.

However, despite trader expectations, the World Bank has advised caution in gauging the actual longer term economic impact of the disaster, pointing out that it's overall magnitude has still not been properly assessed.

Asian markets are still recovering from crashed tiger economies in the late 90's.

Posted at 04:19 PM
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Gigablast following closely on the release of their user-built search engine for users, Gigablast have now released Gigablast Sitesearch tool.

This allows webmasters to use Gigablast search technology to create a search facility for their websites. Although indexing is promised to occur at least weekly, Gigablast also suggest that for content that constantly changes, indexing could be hourly.

Posted at 10:25 AM
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December 29, 2004

Deutsche Bank has made a legal complaint over Yukos's filing for bankruptcy protection in Texas, complaining that Texas was "a jurisdiction in which Yukos owns no real or personal property and conducts no business operations."

At the heart of Deutsche Bank's complaints is the fact that it lost out on fat fees, after being geared up to finance the Gazprom buy-out of Yuganskneftegas - which was scuppered by US chapter 11 bankruptcy rules , forcing the Kremlin and Gazprom to act via a set of intermediaries, as reported in Putin backs Russia's Yukos grab.

Posted at 07:21 PM
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SSL International - formed by a three-way merger between Seton Healthcare, Scholl and condom-maker London International Group, is being firmly tipped for a buy-out in 2005.

With markets hot with the rumour that business intelligence firm GPW was sizing up SSL International for a corporate client, analysts now expect SSL to go into take-over talks within months.

Posted at 07:16 PM
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US Airways, a troubled airline in bankruptcy protection since 2003, has apparently e-mailed it's ground staff, asking them to volunteer to work for free on New Years Day.

This is apparently in response to large numbers suddenly calling in sick over the Christmas period, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of domestic US flights.

It'll be interesting to see whether this works - after all, mass sickies might be seen as a symptom of low worker morale - in which case, asking for free labour might be perceived very badly. Let's see if there's a follow up report to this. :)

Posted at 07:11 PM
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The Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) has reported than as of 10:28am today, payments by debit and credit card overtook payments by cash in the UK.

According to Cash gives way to flexible friend:

Shoppers in the UK are expected to put ��269bn on plastic cards during the whole of 2004, compared with ��268bn paid with cash, Apacs said.

When the first plastic cards appeared in the UK in June 1966, issued by Barclaycard, but only a handful of retailers accepted them and very few customers held them.

"But in less than 40 years, plastic has become our most popular way to pay, due to the added security and flexibility it offers," said Apacs spokeswoman Jemma Smith.

"The key driver has been the introduction of debit cards, which now account for two-thirds of plastic card transactions and are used by millions of us every day."

Posted at 07:07 PM
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Footfall have released more encouraging reports on post-Christmas shopper activity, upturning poor figures oringally reported in Internet wins Christmas shoppers, but high street sales fail Boxing Day.

Reporting on activity from December 26th to December 28th, consumer spending was up an overall 2,1%. this was despite Boxing Day custom being initially down by 16.1%, which was blamed on it falling on a Sunday.

However, retail figures in comparison to 2003 show an overall fall in December by 1.2%.

Posted at 07:02 PM
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Jarvis, the troubled engineering and construction group linked to the fatal Potter's Bar rail crashe, has reported first-half losses of ��283 million - down from a profit of ��33.7 million in the same preiod last year.

Losses had actually been reduced by the recent sell-off of assets, such as roads (��24.5m), property (��25m), and the sale of its stake in the London Underground consortium Tube Lines to Spain's Ferrovial for ��146m.

Jarvis still continues with debts of more than ��230m, and its creditors have been forced to extend credit to 2006 to lower the risk of the company being declared bankrupt.

More: Jarvis hits 'nadir' at half-year.

Posted at 06:55 PM
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December 28, 2004

Novell has released a public beta of its Open Enterprise Server, that mixes its own NetWare with SuSE, an open source Linux distro.

According to Novell beta mixes SuSE Linux, NetWare:

Novell Open Enterprise Server will allow current customers to run a mixed network of NetWare and SuSE Linux servers and use a common management tool. With one component of the offering, called Novell Nterprise Linux Services 1.0, Novell has rewritten common NetWare functions, such as file- and printer-sharing and security, to run on SuSE Linux.

The package includes the NetWare operating system kernel and the SuSE Linux Server 9 Enterprise Edition, which is based on the Linux 2.6 kernel. It also includes so-called high-availability software for preventing server crashes and end-user productivity tools iFolder and Virtual Office.

Posted at 04:35 PM
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The online search market is currently booming and dominated by the big three companies of google, Yahoo, and MSN search. As they continue to vie to increase market share, their continuing development has seen a string a new patents awarded and filed, as Gary Price helpfully and clearly lists in New Patents for Google, IBM, Yahoo & Others at the Search Engine Watch blog.

Almost suprisingly, IBM continue to collect a string of significant patents, and in IBM and Search, the technology giant is reported as making strong moves that could see it as a possible entrant in the search engine war - not least with it's Piquant and Webfountain search technologies.

Posted at 04:20 PM
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The extensive promotional sales used in the run up towards the Christmas period appear to exhausted the consumer retail market, with very poor showings in the following Boxing Day sales.

There were fears that the Christmas market itself would be sluggish, but high street traders pulled out all stops to create a sales bonanza to entice even the most reticent spenders. Online vendors, such as Amazon, reported record sales, fueled especially by iPods and Apple products.

However, retail analysts Footfall in First full day of sales disappoints show Boxing Day custom was down by 16.1% compared to 2003.

In Poor start to High Street sales, the BBC also reports a masive shift to internet sales:

New figures showed internet traders were the big winners in pre-Christmas shopping, with ��400m spent online.

In pre-Christmas shopping, online retailers reported a 17.5% rise in trade over the first three weeks of December compared to the same time last year.

High Street stores recorded a 2% rise on last year's period.

Posted at 04:09 PM
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Variants of the Santy worm, which as reported in Santy: Automated attack on phpbb forums, have begun to surface, continuing a worrying trend of worms that automatically query search engines for suitable targets.

Although the original Santy Worm was an application written in PHP, a major new variant written in Perl has emerged. Security firms are showing marked differences with classifying the resulting variants, with Symantec now designating the line with the suffix Perl.phpinclude, while Kaspersky renamed Santy.d and Santy.e as Spyki.a and b., citing significant differences in the worms' structure from earlier Santies.

According to Google worm targets AOL, Yahoo

"Perl.Santy.B is a worm written in Perl script that attempts to spread to Web servers running versions of the phpBB 2.x bulletin board software prior to 2.0.11," warned Symantec in a Dec. 26 bulletin. "It uses AOL or Yahoo search to find potential new infection targets."

AOL, which uses Google for its underlying search technology, said it was looking into the problem and was uncertain whether Google blocks already in place would prevent misuse of AOL's search site. Yahoo, which dumped Google's search technology in February, could not be reached immediately for comment.

Several other variants are cropping up. Santy.c targets Google once again.

The Brazilian Google has also apparently been specifically targeted for the worms for seeking out targets.

Harry Fuecks at Sitepoint has also written an informative article on the issue of how the variants actually operate, and clearing up a few apparent misconceptions that exploits in PHP itself were being used to drive them: PHP Worms: Santy / Perl.PhpInclude - ModSecurity.

Posted at 03:55 PM
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The US Dollar reached new lows against the Euro, reaching $1.364 by 6pm last night. The USD has now fallen 7% against the Euro this year, and lost 3.2% against the Yen.

Traders do not expect the European Central Bank to make any moves to weaken the Euro itself, while the US is expected to allow for further depreciation of the dollar so as to help face its massive trade deficit.

Posted at 03:51 PM
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Oil traders are ignoring the possible consequences of the Asian Earthquake disaster on global oil supplies, and instead looking only for the moment at the US weather forecast.

With good reserves and forecasts of a mild winter, it means that US production and distribution is expected to be steady and healthy, and that expectation has delivered a 6% fall in US oil prices.

However, as reported in Mild winter drives US oil down 6%:

Nonetheless, US crude is still 30% more expensive than at the beginning of 2004, boosted by growing demand and bottlenecks at refineries.

Posted at 03:46 PM
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According to the online report, Report: Craigslist costing newspapers millions, online classifieds via sites such as Craigslist is costing the local print market an estimated $65 million in employment advertising revenue.

The claim is made implicitly by Classified Intelligence, a marketing firm that aims to specialise in offering classifieds solutions to businesses.

According to the CNet coverage:

Local search advertising revenue is expected to reach $502 million in 2004, up from $408 million last year, according to market researcher Jupiter Research. That number is expected to hit $824 million by 2008.

Classified advertising represents a $28 billion to $30 billion business in the United States, including $16 billion in daily newspapers, and an estimated $100 billion business internationally.

Online auction giant eBay took a 25 percent stake in Craigslist in August.

Posted at 03:40 PM
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Two days after the world's worst earthquake for 40 years devastated coastal regions of South Asia, washed away by with 30 foot tsunamis, it emerged that no official warning channels existed.

According to USGS: Warnings could have saved thousands, US researchers who detected the massive quake tried to contact governments in the area to warn of an impending tsumani alert. However, only Australia, Indomesia, and groups of Pacific islands had any kind of notification alert in place.

The reason being is simply that this was a rare high magnitude event, and those countries that suffered most had no informal evacuation procedure in place in the event of a tsumani threatening, let alone any kind of official government channels.

It's considered unlikely that the Indian Ocean itself will suffer such a major event anytime soon. However, it remains a clear lesson to the world that greater communication needs to be allowed between major earth monitoring stations and regional governments, so in the event of a major event being recorded, local officials in identified danger areas can be notified to take action. After all, as XX said:

"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get...to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."

Posted at 03:26 PM
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December 24, 2004

Opera are determined not to be left behind in the battle for the browser market, as the open source Mozilla Firefox fights into Microsoft Internet Explorer's dominant market share.

Announcing teh release of a new test version, it comes not simply with additional support for formats such as RSS, but also offers surfing via voice activated commands and the ability to have web pages read to them.

According to the report in CNet: Opera releases new talking Web browser:

The company said it has made enough improvements to turn the final version of this beta download into a major new release, instead of an ordinary incremental upgrade.

The new Opera beta version also includes user interface improvements such as bigger browsing space, cleaner menus, and better printing support, the company says. The browser also now works with Google's Gmail, correcting a problem that had led some Opera users to switch to Firefox.

The voice support is powered by IBM's Embedded ViaVoice technology, which Opera licensed early in the year.

Posted at 02:44 PM
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RLX Technologies, who were the first to offer blade servers, to help cut down on power consumption and unit density in datacenters, have suddenly announced plans to entirely drop their server arm, and instead focus on selling its Control Tower software management software.

According to CNet, in Blade pioneer RLX gets out of servers:

The hardware market is notoriously difficult on start-ups, however, and RLX's sales never took flight. The company debuted during the massive downturn in IT spending. Meanwhile, well-heeled competitors like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Dell began to create their own blade servers and management tools.

Sales of RLX systems were also initially hampered by the fact that it used Transmeta processors, though it subsequently shifted to Intel chips.

The decision to get out of hardware is relatively sudden. The company announced a new line of servers in November.

Posted at 02:41 PM
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Chinese security company, Xfocus Team, has published on the internet information on two new serious exploits within Microsoft Windows, along with "exploit code" that allows malicious coders to immediately start taking advantage of the exploits.

These appear to be pretty serious exploits, too - according to Exploits released for new Windows flaws:

One vulnerability, in the operating system's LoadImage function, could enable an attacker to compromise a victim's PC when the computer displays a specially crafted image placed on a Web site or in an e-mail. The other vulnerability, in the Windows Help program, likewise could affect any program that opens a Help file.

Because the flaws are in a library used by Windows programs, almost all browsers and e-mail clients are likely affected by the flaws, said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering at Symantec.

"They are rather serious," Huger said. "Both can be exploited by anything that processes images or reads help files."

Posted at 02:35 PM
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Ending speculation that the Russian state had simply circumvented international restrictions, Russia's President Vladamir Putin defended the acquisition of Yukos's key production unit by Rosneft, via Baikal finance, claiming that it followed "free market principles".

As reported in Kremlin plays dirty for Yukos?, Russia's state owned fuel giant, Gazprom were legally prevented from buying up Yuganskneftegas, despite being favourites - and instead a completely unknown company, Baikal Finance, suddenly appeared on the scene and won a bid for the production unit.

Baikal was then bought out by Rosneft - which is itself already in the process of being merged with Gazprom - thus ensuring acquisition despites international obstacles.

According to the BBC report, Putin backs state grab for Yukos:

The US, meanwhile, has said a lack of transparency in the sale of Yukos' Yuganskneftegas subsidiary could affect Russia's standing in the world economy.

"We think this sends the wrong signals to foreign investors and could negatively impact Russia's role in the global economy," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

Posted at 02:23 PM
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HSBC bank announced that it would be opening 80 branches on December 28th 2004 - officially a bank holiday - to provide sales of mortgages, loans and savings products.

With volunteer staff earning double pay, trade union Amicus-Unifi supported the move so long as staff were not compelled to work bank holidays.

Posted at 02:20 PM
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December 23, 2004

A malicious script, a worm named "Santy", was used to search through Google results to target tens of thousands of phpbb forums.

According to an article in Computer Review, Worm uses Google to hit thousands of PHP sites,

The worm, Santy, exploited a vulnerability in phpBB, a bulletin board plug-in for the popular PHP web site scripting environment, to deface at least tens of thousands of web sites, deleting data from servers as it went.

It is believed to be the first major automated threat to use a search engine, Google in this case, to identify potentially vulnerable targets. This tactic has been known about and used by hackers in more targeted attacks for a long time.

The worm searches Google for the term "viewtopic.php", the name of the vulnerable component, in URLs, a signature of the presence of phpBB. Google returns about 7.5 million hits for the query "allinurl:viewtopic.php".

Once it has found a vulnerable machine, the exploit is executed. On the target server, all files with the extensions .asp, .htm, .jsp, .php, .phtm and .shtm are overwritten with an HTML page announcing "This site is defaced!!!"

The defacement page also contains the text: "NeverEverNoSanity WebWorm generation X", where X is the number of infections that iteration of the worm has so far caused. Google did not return any hits for a query on the defacement text.

A report on the event can be found at Kaspersky: Net-Worm.Perl.Santy.a threatens Internet forums:

This worm infects certain web sites by exploiting a vulnerability in phpBB, a popular package used to create Internet forums. Santy.a is spreading rapidly, and has caused an epidemic. However, this does not directly affect end users - although the worm infects web sites, it does not infect computers used to view these sites.

Santy.a is something of a novelty - it creates a specially formulated Google search request, which results in a list of sites running vulnerable versions of phpBB. It then sends a request containing a procedure which will trigger the vulnerability to these sites. Once the attacked server processes the request, the worm will penetrate the site, gaining control over the resource. It then repeats this routine.

Once the worm has gained control over a site, it will scan all directories on the infected site. All files with the extensions .htm, .php, .asp, .shtm, .jsp and phtm will be overwritten with the text 'This site is defaced!!! This site is defaced!!! NeverEverNoSanity WebWorm generation'.

Apart from defacing infected sites with this text, the worm has no payload. It will not infect machines which are used to view infected sites. Kaspersky Lab recommends that all users of phpBB should upgrade to version 2.0.11 to prevent their sites from being defaced.

PHPBB forums also offered support for how affected sites should look to repair themselves in NeverEverNoSanityforDummies - Beginner How To Fix It Thread.

Additionally, in Channel 9, it was suggested in the thread Those running phpbb and php 4 or 5 should also update PHP:

php4 should be patched to 4.3.1, and 5 should also be patched immediately.

Additionally,

BEWARE, there is a bug in php-imap that was only fixed 2 days ago. so Ultimately, there's a good chance your exploit fixed 4.3.10 rpm will have this bug in it.

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=31142&edit=2

If you update php imap with an rpm of 4.3.10 it will most likely break your php email programs that work on the php-imap library.

Solution, here's what I did. I used the faulty php imap rpm, then built the latest snapshot of php from the source

http://snaps.php.net/

from the dir where I makefile'd the source to binaries, I copied out only modules/imap.so to the one the php-imap rpm (the faulty one) had installed so

cp modules/imap.so /usr/lib/php4/

from the dir where you made php from the source. This fixes the imap_mail_compose bug with the 4.3.10 rpm (the one I had anyway) and doesn't break RPM, RPM doesn't know any better and still thinks it's the original imap.so.

Problem solved!

Google noticed the use of the worm to automate queries on its search engines, and was able top kill the process after 10 hours. However, thousands of phpbb forums were believed to have ben affected in that time.

Forums that had not patched to the latest phpbb version 2.0.11 were affected, while forums patched up to date were protected from this attack.

However, this was the latest in a run of security exploits to affect the phpbb forum project.

Ultimately, in an ironic reverse on how open source vs licenced operating systems work, the phpbb forum project suffers from limited volunteer help and support. Despite the dedicated work of key developers, licenced forum software releases, such as vBulletin and Invision Power Board, have been able to hold much higher standards of security.

Posted at 02:12 PM
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As reported in the MSN search blog, MSN have launched a Wiki to support their general attack on search markets, not least web and desktop search.

Named the MSN searchfeedback Wiki, it lists major areas of intended discussion as Web Search, Desktop Search, and Site Owners.

The Wiki is set up as part of Microsoft's Channel 9 project.

As a few points of note:

1. The Wiki front page links into WebmasterWorld and the SearchEngineWatch forums as places to discuss with Microsoft staff.


2. When I applied to join the forums, MSN Hotmail's spam filter sent the opt-in e-mail to the junk folder.

Posted at 01:59 PM
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Red Hat sold over 132,000 subscriptions to its Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, generating a Q3 profit of $10.8 million. Although a significant proportion of these licences discounted on price for large volume sales to purchasing businesses, the company had set itself higher sales targets. However, the revenue reported shows a company maturing, with over 6cents per share being returned to investors.

Interestingly enough, in Red Hat pulls out a profit, Chief Executive Matthew Szulik apparently:

preferred to tout deferred revenue--the subscription money that customers have pledged to pay but that Red Hat hasn't yet recognized. Deferred revenue increased to $121.4 million in the quarter, a 22 percent increase of $99.7 million from three months earlier and a 170 percent increase from $45.1 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Either way, a company finding its feet and growing healthily.

Posted at 01:35 PM
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Chris Jablonski at ZDnet makes a rather astonishing observation in his report, Enterprise IT to Firefox: "Your resume looks great, but sorry; we don t see a fit ".

Simply put, IT departments seem unwilling to work with Mozilla Firefox in a corporate enviornment.

Why? The answer is simply that they are unused to working with it, and because of close integration between Microsoft products, means that changing any aspect of that relationship needs to justify itself in terms of immediate costs.

As the MetaGroup explain in more detail in What Will Drive Firefox Adoption in the Enterprise?

Despite all the media noise around the Firefox browser, we do not believe the majority of IT organizations will decide to support it for a number of key reasons. These include the lack of subcomponent administration (for desktop lockdown), compatibility, and integration with other desktop applications. Compatibility is an interesting one. While IE has been criticized by purists for its poor adherence to standards, it is also the browser most sites have customized their development for. Many of the features talked about with Firefox are red herrings (e.g., tabbed browsing, ad blocking, extension architecture). However, some IT organizations have noticed stunning performance benefits in using Firefox with specific applications and will therefore likely support it in limited release - but only where performance is a more important consideration than the combination of all other factors. If consumer take-up of Firefox reaches the vast majority of users, then IE in the corporate environment will be reconsidered, but for now, the benefits of migration do not stack up.

Which is a situation I personally find pretty ridiculous. Internet Explorer is build upon inherent security vulnerabilities, and in a coporate environment where a large number of employees can be sharing this same flawed software, then you have a situation of mass liability.

Whilst this naturally should be factored into a corporate IT framework anyway - after all, you never known what any single employee may try to do willingly with any single software tool - resistance to offering a more secure browsing software tool is nothing more than resistance to necessary change.

The fact that Internet Explorer can much more easily coaxed into executing malicious code, surely means that encouraging its continuing use is effectively an invitation to suffer expensive damage at some later date.

After all, so many companies have suffered so badly at the hands of malicious scripts, especially in the form of mass mailing worms. And although it can certainly be appreciated that a complete change of Operating system is an extremely major undertaking in any develop IT infrastructure, the fact that where simpler software alternatives are offered that will work within existing operating enviroments - but are spurned - is simply an invitation to maintain an expensive status quo of repeated security attacks that cost UK companies millions in lost revenue every year.

If UK companies have no interest in tackling their larger security liabilities, then they invite such problems on themeselves. In which case, it becomes harder and harder to be sympathetic to their losses.

Posted at 01:19 PM
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Nanotechnology firms Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. (CNI) and C Sixty both announced that they will combined into a single company.

Both located in Texas, CNI manufactures carbon nanotubes and C sixty manufactures Buckminster Fullerenes, and companies own a number of patents across their specialities - thus focussing a lot of the carbon nanotechnology exerptise and intellectual rights into a single company.

According to Carbon nanotechnologies companies merge,

Technically, the deal is a merger, but because CNI is larger, it will function more like an acquisition, Nordan said.

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December 22, 2004

Microsoft has lost it's fight so far with the European Commission in Europe's biggest ever anti-trust case, totalling 497m euros (��331m; $613m).

Microsoft had appealed that punitive demands of the EC would cause "irreparable damage" were entirely dismissed by the European Court of First Instance, second only to the European Court of Justice in terms of legal authority in Europe.

As of January 2005, Microsoft cannot release versions of Windows operating systems bundled with the Windows Media Player - a flasgship enterprise of the Windows XP operating system.

Microsoft has also been ordered to reveal sections of code to allow third parties to develop additional media applications for Windows.

According to: Brussels blow to Microsoft upheld

Brussels determined that the inclusion of Media Player was an abuse of monopoly as it made it very difficult for rivals such as RealNetworks and Apple's QuickTime to get consumers to use their products instead.

In Microsoft readies scaled-back Windows, CNet further reports on the press conference Microsoft held, in which Microsoft group product manager, Matt Pilla, complained that European comsumers would be getting less value for their product. After all,

In addition to lacking a copy of Windows Media Player, the new version of Windows won't be able to do things like play a CD or MP3 file or transfer music to a portable device--at least not without additional software from another company.

Although it's easy to be sympathetic to the EU consumer, who will now have to make a decision regarding their choice of media player, anybody familiar with Microsoft as a company will be well aware that the European Commission's concerns of abuse of monopoly are a well-known Microsoft tactic.

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The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has been getting tough this week.

In the first action, building society Bradford and Bingley was fined ��650,000 and ordered to compensate existing investors by ��6 million, for mis-selling precipice bonds and with-profits investments to 6,800 investors.

Precipice bonds are high risk investments - often linked to an index, such as the FTSE-100 - that can offer high returns when successful, but create significant losses where the market downturns. FSA accused the B&B of not warning investors properly of this risk.

According to reports: ��650,000 mis-selling fine for B&B

Bradford & Bingley did not make suitable recommendations to customers and failed to keep proper records of sales made, the FSA ruled.

The FSA added the offence had been compounded because the bank had ignored warnings about the quality of its record keeping dating back to 1998.

As a result the bank had exposed customers to a higher degree of risk than was suitable through its sale of with-profits and precipice bond investments, the watchdog added.

"This is a very serious case of mis-selling which was made worse by the fact that Bradford & Bingley had prior warning of the specific concerns about its record keeping," Andrew Proctor, head of enforcement at the FSA, said.

"However, the firm failed to pay sufficient attention to these warnings and take adequate action, which put thousands of its customers at risk of financial loss. "

Also targeted this week was insurance giant Axa Sun Life, who was fined ��500,000 for advertising of its Axa Cash Builder Plus. A with-profits endowment policy, that has seen a string of TV ads fronted by June Whitfield and Carol Smilie, was held to have been improperly represented, with potential investors not warned clearly enough of financial penalties imposed should be plan be cashed before maturity.

Last year Lloyds was ordered to pay ��98 million to its investors, also for the mis-selling of precipice bonds. and in September, finance advisors firm, David M Aarron Ltd, was banned from trading after it mis-sold precipice bonds to 8,000 investors.

Addendum: 24th December 2004

The FSA today announced a ��194 million compensation package for investors caught up in the split-capital investment trust scandal of 2000.

Eighteen investment firms involved in the sale of the investments agreed the compensation package with the Financial Services Authority.

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December 21, 2004

BBC documentary "Real Story" alleges that loans are being sold to banking customers primarily on the basis of eraching sales targets.

Relying on testament of an ex personal account manager for Lloyds, and on contact from clustomers who claim they were mis-sold loans, the program suggests that staff and customers liased within a high-pressure sales environment - where staff were expected to make lona sales targets, or face penalties to their salary.

According to the former employee:

"I know people who are still there at the bank now and they tell me the selling culture is continuing.

"If you didn't reach your figures your salary could be reduced.

"You wouldn't want to sell to people who you knew couldn't afford it but, unfortunately, due to the high pressure sales environment, that was sometimes the case.

"The sales culture was very, very aggressive indeed."

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Suprnova.org, a bit torrent file-sharing service, is the latest bit torrent file-sharing service to close down, after music and movie industries launched a strong of high profile cases against server operators where file sharing via bit torrent servers was allowed.

According to the report, Popular BitTorrent site shuts down after flurry of suits

Last week, movie studios sued more than 100 operators of U.S. and European sites that host BitTorrent links but did not name the defendants.

Suprnova.org was the most popular repository for links to files that could be downloaded using the BitTorrent program.

Another site that carried BitTorrent links, N4p.com, said it had shut down due to a civil complaint that cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Torrentbits.org and Phoenix-torrents.com also shut down.

Still, there were plenty of sites with BitTorrent links alive on Monday, including a "mirror," or copy, of Suprnova.org.

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Six Apart have released Movable Type 3.14, primarily in an effeort to stop comment spam overloading their servers.

Whilst Six apart blame automated bots themselves for increasing server loads, they have also made significant changes to prevent the unnecessary processing of comments, such as:

• Unnecessary rebuilds upon comment moderation are eliminated.
• Generation of internal bookkeeping data for dynamic pages is not performed when using static pages.
• New weblogs default to having comment moderation enabled.

However, webmasters at Threadwatch point out that reducing server loads does nothing to combat actual comment spamming. Nick Wilson has also posted an article, The Solution to Blog Spamming, which aims to address many issues.

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December 20, 2004

Today the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published new standards for merging XML documents, with XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0.

This is intended to deliver a final death blow to Document Type Definition (DTD), a server-based set of instructionsfor interpreting XML documents how their elements interact.

According to the CNet report: XML documents--merge ahead:

[W3C has] since 2001 has recommended the use of XML Schema instead. It has mandated the use of XML Schema in other recommendations such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 1.2 and WSDL (Web Services Description Language).

"XML Schema will ultimately replace DTDs," Le Hegaret said. "By adding this inclusion mechanism, we will rely less and less on it."

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Search Engine Gigablast has made a surprise attack on the search engine market with a powerful new tool: custom build your own search engine, using Gigablast tecjnology to search up to 200 URLs: Build Your Own Topic Search Engine.

Initial play suggests that it's a great idea, where practicable - up to a point. Unfortunately, the tech seems eager to return the same site multiple times for the same search term - so if a site contained the searchphrase as internal linking anchor text in a default navigation menu, then every page with the menu on bearing that searchphrase would be returned.

Is that simply a limitation of the Gigablast engine, or the actual custom search itself?

Either way, expect to see movement from the major players quickly following this up, to counter Gigablast's otherwise surprise foray into the mainstream user base.

Still, it's easy to see this catching on,

Posted at 10:36 PM
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In Calling All Advertisers, Forbes describes how Fox Networks will be airing "mobisodes" to subscribed mobile users.

Each Mobisode is a 1 minute drama, starring new actors, but based around themes and plot elements of the hugely popular "24" TV series, starring Kiefer Sutherland.

These Mobisodes are set to support the release of Season 3 of "24". and no doubt will be followed by a barrage of similar ads, in this new marriage of entertainment and marketing.

Marketers apparently reason that so long as the Mobisodes remain short, entertaining - and free - then opt-in consumers on the 3G networks will be happy to receive them.

Posted at 10:28 PM
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Mobile devices are hot - a hot topic for the future of information. As reported before Mobile devices: 1.5 billion subscriptions in 2004, the figures suggest that being able to cater for mobile device users is going to be an incredibly imporant marketing concern.

But how do you design for this market, when you have to work to screen resolutions that make 800x600 seem huge by comparison?

Stop Design offer a useful primer on the issue, in Targeting Small Screens, where he makes a suggestion:

What if we started by applying a very basic style sheet as both screen and handheld media types. The basic style sheet would only apply simple rules for color, typography, link treatment, and simple list styling. No complex floated columns or absolute positioning. This style sheet would take care of all CSS-supporting devices, whether or not they support the handheld media type.

Then, we use JavaScript to detect wider browser widths �\ those that might typically imply a desktop browser. If JavaScript is supported, and a wide width is detected (say 620px or greater �\ or maybe even 750 if your design only works at 750 or greater), then we assume not only a desktop browser, but that enough window real estate exists to render a multi-column design as intended. In this case, we add the main style sheet that divides the page into our standard multi-column layout. Browsers that either don�ft support JavaScript (or where it�fs been disabled) or browsers that don�ft report wide enough screen size only get the basic style sheet.

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Nick Wilson at Threadwatch raises concerns over the Google Library Project.

He points out simmering copyright objections express both by Daniel Brandt at Google Watch, and also carried by an article from the Times, in All the world�fs best books at a click in which concerns are expressed at one single organisation effectively owning "proprietary rights" over all the material it digitises for search.

Ultimately, issues about electronic rights may also sour the process, an issue that Google is no stranger to. Concerns already exist that other methods of Google storing and processing information, such as website caches, may violate international copyright laws. However, Google feels that it works well within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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Cindy McCaffrey, leader of Google's corporate marketing efforts, with responsibility for corporate communications as well as marketing of Google's products and services to consumers and business customers, is reportedly leaving the company.

The story is carried by the Silion Beat report, McCaffrey leaving Google. Michael Bazeley makes the following astute observation:

McCaffrey shaped Google's low-key marketing approach, rejecting a high-profile campaign in the company's early years in favor of word-of-mouth marketing, colleague Matt Marshall says. "Remember, (then interim marketing V.P.) Scott Epstein brought in some high-powered advertising experts and proposed a massive advertising campaign in late 1999. McCaffrey, siding with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, rejected that approach, saying they'd rather spend their money on developing the best product, which would be the best way of generating publicity. That was a significant step for two reasons. First, because everyone else around them at the time was spending millions on ads. Second, because other search engines (think Excite, et al) had successfully pursued such ad strategies to get a leap ahead of the competition."

The rest, as they say, is history.

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Hotmail has reportedly dropped McAfee for Trendmicro, in the provision of virus protection software for its e-mail users.

According to the report Hotmail ditches McAfee for Trend:

The McAfee virus scanner (Security Services for MSN) formerly used by Hotmail promised much the same thing. But anti-virus signature files for the McAfee service were only updated once a week (on Thursday nights). Trend said it will be updating the signature files at least three times a week.

"We are considering doing a daily update. In the meantime we'll be updating signature files three times a week or when a major outbreak occurs," said Raimund Genes, European president of Trend Micro.

The move comes a a marketing triumph for Trendmircro, and will no doubt help it push out news of it's flagship PC-cillin virus removal software.

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A new form of Pyramid Scheme, dubbed "Matrix Schemes", has apparently been targeting teens in non-existent "free gift" offer.

The scheme operates by asking someone to buy a low-cost low-value item, in order to qualify for a free larger quality product. For example, such a scheme might encourage the purchase of a CD-ROM of ringtunes, in order to get a free iPod.

The problem comes in that the "gifts" are only sent out after a specific number of people have joined and paid their money. For example, someone who is hundredth in a list that requires 50 new recruits per gift would not reach the top and receive their prize until 5,000 people had joined and shelled out ��20 each.

According the Registers report, Punters warned over 'matrix' web scam, the Office of Fair Trading stated:

"The nature of the schemes means that the number of members who are waiting for their 'free gift' will always far exceed the number of 'free gifts' actually awarded. The further down the waiting list you join, the less your chances of ever receiving your 'free gift'."

The Register reports that in August, UK company Liquorice Mix Ltd, was closed down for running a matrix scheme, after a DTI investigation.

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E-mail spammers make the headlines today in a string of stories.

For starters, CIS Internet Services, a small ISP focussed around Clinton, Iowa, was awarded $1 billion damages against 3 e-mail spammers, who according to Iowa law are fined $10 per Unsolicited Commercial E-mail sent.

At one point in 2000 the ISP was receiving up to 10 million spams a day - mostly directed to non-existent email addresses. The source of the addresses was a CDROM called Bulk Mailing 4 Dummies. This contained 2.8m email addresses supposedly for customers of CIS, as well as millions of addresses, mostly bogus, for the likes of AOL, Hotmail and Earthlink

More on that story here: Judge Awards $1 billion in Spam Lawsuit.

In the UK itself, Peter Francis Clifford Macrae, held to be one of Britain's worst spammers, is reported to be charged with a number of criminal offences, including blackmail, fraud and criminal damage.

Apparently using multiple pseudonyms constructed from his names, according to UK's biggest spammer charged with more offences, he is being charged for:

threats to kill, threatening to burn down a trading standards office that was investigating him, and making obscene phonecalls.

However, appearing at Huntingdon Magistrates court on Tuesday 14 December, he was also faced with a series of other charges including blackmail, transferring criminal property, criminal damage and running a business for fraudulent purposes have been added. He remains in police custody until his next court date in Peterborough today, Monday 20 December.

Macrae also faced an injunction from Nominet last month, prevents him from threatening Nominet's staff or even using the company Whois database of .uk domain owners.

If that wasn't enough to make the world of UCE look bad, a 16-year old youth escaped a prison sentence for distributing the Randex Trojan. According to the report Teenage British Trojan distributor escapes jail, once the machines were infected, their IPs were sold off to UCE spammers, so that they could access the machines for distrubuting spam.

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Accountants BDO Stoy Hayward predict that 2,230 manufacturing firms will fail this year, against 2,440 in 2003:

Overall, the number of firms going bust in 2004 is expected to be 8% lower than the 17,550 that failed last year, BDO Stoy Hayward Industry Watch said.

The group predicted 16,150 firms would go bust - an average of 310 a week and the lowest figure for six years.

This is despite the fact that the Great British Pound is currently riding at it's highest levels against the US dollar for years.

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Finally, the predictions are coming true - the housing slow down is now a definite reality, according to a number of figures released today.

According to the report No seasonal lift for house market:

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), British Bankers Association (BBA) and Building Societies Association (BSA) all said mortgage lending was slowing.

CML figures showed gross lending fell by 4% in November as the number of people buying new homes fell.

Elsewhere, the BBA added underlying mortgage lending rose by ��4m in November, compared to October's ��4.29m.

The CML said that loans for new property purchases fell 25% year-on-year to 85,000 - the lowest total seen since February 2003.

Data from the CML showed lending fell to just over ��25bn in November, from ��25.5bn a year earlier.

Separate figures from the Building Societies Association showed the value of mortgage approvals -- loans agreed but not yet made -- stood 32% lower than at the same time last year, at a seasonally-adjusted ��2.98bn.

The figures come hot on the heels of new data from property website Rightmove which suggested owners must indulge in a "winter sale" and slash prices by up to 8%.

Miles Shipside, commercial director at Rightmove, said sellers would have to be "more realistic with their asking prices" to tempt buyers.

The average asking price of a home fell by more than ��600 from ��190,329 in November to ��189,733 in December, while the length of time it takes to sell a home rose to 81 days from 53 in the summer.

The figures come at a time when the US housing market - also having an experienced a boom, was showing clear signs of going into reverse:
Housing prices: gone into reverse

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British Telecom reported that they get a new sign-up for broadband services every 10 seconds. They also claim that there are now more than 4 million internet users in the UK who are connected via broadband - the last million of which were signed up over the past 4 months.

According to Broadband in the UK gathers pace:

Part of the surge in people signing up was due to BT stretching the reach of ADSL - the UK's most widely used way of getting broadband - beyond six kilometres.

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology lets ordinary copper phone lines support high data speeds. The standard speed is 512kbps, though faster connections are available.

According to BT, more than 95% of UK homes and businesses can receive broadband over the phone line. It aims to extend this figure to 99.4% by next summer.

There are also an estimated 1.7 million cable broadband customers in the UK.

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In a move that leaves many people speculating on dirty tactics, Yuganskneftegas was finally sold to a completely unknown company at auction - to a bidder by the name of the Baikal Finance Group, who bought the company for 261bn roubles (��4.8bn; $9.4bn).

Gazprom was originally the favourite for the purchase - however, it failed to get finance for the deal after a US court injunction barred it from taking part.

The whole process is part of the ugly destruction of the Yukos oil company, whose depended largely on Yuganskneftegas output.

Gazprom could still openly get its hands on Yuganskneftegas, if the Baikal Finance Group fails to make the purchase, or else simply sells straight to it.

Either way, the message given out seems to be pretty clear - when in Russia, support Putin - or else.

Posted at 06:59 PM
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Former Airtours company, MyTravel, has reached an agreement with Shareholders who had been about to bring the company before an appearance at the High Court.

MyTravel suffered from a failed expansion big left them reeling with losses of over ��190 million. Bondholders were owed over ��200 million, and had tried to court court action to reclaim their monies.

However, fears that a court order would leave them with far less equity than the company was offering bondholders means that an agreement was erached on restructuring the cmopany, hours before the due court appearance.

It remains to be seen whether the restructred company will be strong enough to survive an already fiercely competitive market.

More information: MyTravel secures debt rescue deal

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According to an Asian newspaper report, Sony are planning to exit the plasma scren market in 2005.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper claimed that Sony - the second largest plasma TV maker, behind Matsushita/Panasonic, would finish with plasmas models perhaps as early as the Spring.

Sony has denied the reports, but a point of interest is that Sharp has already ditched plasma for LCD,

According to the report Sony denies plasma TV withdrawal:

Sony responded with a statement that while it would concentrate on LCD screens, it had no plans to pull out of plasma.

Electronics analyst Kazuya Yamamoto said it was difficult for Sony to make a profit out of plasma screens.

"Because Sony relies 100% on others for its panels, it has little room to lower costs," he said.

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Retail growth has been high for the Christmas period, destroying gloomy predictions that rising interest rates, massive debt, and an uncertain housing market, would dampen Christmas selling.

However, it has to be pointed out that the sales have really been turned on this year, so increased growth can hardly be held to have been a spontaneous development.

As reported by Reuters: Shopping surges ahead of Christmas

That put annual retail sales growth at 6.1 percent as consumers hit the High Street in force, responding well to discounting in the early days of a season during which many retailers rake in the lion's share of their yearly sales.

The rise from October compared with analysts' expectations of a modest 0.1 percent increase.

The BBC in Christmas shoppers flock to tills also reports on merchants across the UK experiencing significant growth in sales.

However, it has to be said, with interest rates likely to rise again in 2005, with the housing inflation possibly going into reverse, and massive consumer debt to contend with, is this the last of the fat cow years before the lean times hit?

Posted at 06:39 PM
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A professor at Cambridge University has warned that the new chip and pin cards may not be so secure as banks would have us believe.

Professor Ross Anderson, an expert on security engineering, think it's only a matter of time before the underworld adapts and exploits different methods of capturing PIN numbers for their own use:

"The sort of thing that I expect to go wrong is that villains will set up in business with equipment that will capture customer pins," he said.

"Now we're all being trained to use our pins at the point of sale it's a simple matter to set up a market stall and capture card and pin data.

"They can make up forged cards and use them, for example, at cash machines."

The banking industry repeatedly looks to the big French experiment in chip and pni, which has apparently reduced credit card fraud by over 80%, since first introduced around two years ago.

However, now that chip and pin is becoming more important a concern, perhaps that will create the necessary adaptive pressure for underworld elements to push to exploit vulnerabilities in the system?

Or, perhaps, as I fear, more people will simply be violently mugged for their PIN numbers. After all, you can't tell someone your signature.

More on Professor Anderson's comments at the BBC: 'Chip and pin' security warning

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December 18, 2004

Mark Athitakis at Business2 identifies what he calls the "Second internet boom" in his article How to Make Money on the Net.

However, Businessweek warns in Throw out your old business plan that the only way to succeed in this is to think about how the net works on its own terms - something I've already stated in Business Plan archive.

As if to hammer the point, the Wall Street Journal also covers why it's important to marketing on the internet on the internet's own terms in Even Successful Brands Must Start Over Online.

Ironically, sometimes it is easier for the small business to take advantage of what the internet offers, so long as they have some understanding of how they can integrate properly with it - as Steve Neiderhauser points out in Options and integrated thinking, it is those businesses that are able to simultaneously tackle the various technical, media, and marketing challenges of the internet at the same time that will profit particularly.

This is exactly the sort of issue that Jeremy Zawodny at Yahoo! has been grappling with himself in Tom Foremski on Google and Yahoo Culture where he resolves his struggle as to whether Yahoo! itself is primarily a media company or technology company. Ultimately, though it is primarily a media company, he realises it needs a powerhouse of technical expertise to power.

This leads to why so many prior companies have failed in the dotcom boom and bust - they jumped into an internet without the array of expertise required. Seth Godin reports in his books how he wastefully burned corporate marketing budgets, precisely because he had yet to learn how the internet functioned.

This is precisely why so many web-savvy geeks have already been able to align themselves within key niche markets on the internet - by understanding how it works, and having the skills to actually apply a range of insights and expertise across multiple areas.

These are the real beneficiaries of the internet - and those companies that dare pay for their services are the the ones that will most benefit in the continuing development of the internet economy. Second boom or not, the key to success here are multi-tasking skills.

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The Federal Trade Commission has finally released it's definition of what constitutes mass-mailed Unsolited Commercial E-mail:

For e-mail messages that contain only the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service (�gcommercial content�h), the primary purpose of the message will be deemed to be commercial;

For e-mail messages that contain both commercial content and �gtransactional or relationship�h content as set forth in the Act�fs definition of �gtransactional or relationship message�h and in the final Rule, the primary purpose of the message will be deemed to be commercial if either: 1) a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line of the e-mail would likely conclude that the message contains commercial content; or 2) the e-mail�fs �gtransactional or relationship�h content does not appear in whole or substantial part at the beginning of the body of the message;

For e-mail messages that contain both commercial content and content that is neither �gcommercial�h nor �gtransactional or relationship,�h the primary purpose of the message will be deemed to be commercial if either: 1) a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line of the message would likely conclude that the message contains commercial content; or 2) a recipient reasonably interpreting the body of the message would likely conclude that the primary purpose of the message is commercial. Factors relevant to this interpretation include the placement of commercial content in whole or in substantial part at the beginning of the body of the message; the proportion of the message dedicated to commercial content; and how color, graphics, type size, and style are used to highlight commercial content; and

For e-mail messages that contain only �gtransactional or relationship�h content, the message will be deemed to have a �gtransactional or relationship�h primary purpose.

According to a brief summary at MakretingVOX FTC Finally Defines 'Commercial Email'

Already endorsed by the Direct Marketing Association, the criteria are unlikely to trouble most marketers. The criteria specifically address the as-yet gray area of whether or not an email should be treated as commercial if it involves a relationship with a past customer or subscriber, especially when such "transactional" messages are mixed with ads and promotions. By the new FTC criteria, these emails escape the stricter measures put on commercial email, so long as the subject line and top content of the email focuses on the transaction rather than a promotional message.

Posted at 01:25 PM
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The PHP group have released two critical updates of PHP, to prevent third-parties taking control of servers running the server programming language.

Version 4.3.10 and 5.0.3 of PHP were released by the software webdevelopers group, and according to CNet in Patches slapped on serious PHP flaws:

Arguably the most critical vulnerability is in a function used to compact data for storage. By exploiting the flaw, an attacker could take control of the Web server that runs a vulnerable version of the PHP: Hypertext Preprocessing (PHP), according to the Hardened-PHP group, which found the flaw.

Apparently, six other less critical security flaws were also identified and are listed here: Hardened-PHP Project - Multiple vulnerabilities within PHP 4/5.

Posted at 01:21 PM
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One of the big marketing tricks is to set a hook to draw the clients in - and one common method of setting up a hook is via a "special offer".

Rugles points out a recent issue with a Dell offer, that many clients took as nothing more than a "sting" than a "hook", as described by the Register in Revolting customers slam dunk Dell
.

We probably spend over ��200k a year with Dell and projected to spend double that in 2005. We saw the Dell ��99 server while looking to buy a few other bits and bobs. Stuck an order in for two, both with a gig of RAM, upgraded processor etc. These would have been useful servers to train our junior guys on.

Less than an hour later our account manager came back saying they had sold them all, but offering us a different model server for nearly four times the cost. To say we are not impressed with Dell is an understatement. Shame on Dell.

A number of others reported their orders never completed - but of those who claim theirs did:

I am still awaiting my confirmation. I phoned up Tuesday and was told my order was accepted and I would receive a confirmation today. As far as I am concerned a verbal contract now exists. If I don't get these I think I will pay the ��30 for Dell to come and discuss it at my local County Court. It will cost them at least the cost of the servers just to turn up.

I guess Santa won't take the blame for this one.

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December 17, 2004

In a move that combines nearly $400 million in share options with $30 million in cash, Ebay has purchased rent.com.

While rent.com had annual sales the past year of $40 million, the purchase sets ground for Ebay in a property market that has inflated heavily in the US.

With property bubbles apparent in major economies across the world, this is one Christmas present that may yet prove costly in the long-term.

Posted at 10:39 PM
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Turkey- a country that is large, poor, and predominantly Muslim - has now been set a date to begin real talks for the joining of the the overwhelmingly richer - and Christian - European Union.

In a process that could take 15 years, and with no guarantees of membership, talks will begin in October 2005.

The US has constantly moved Britain's hand in Europe to support a country that is otherwise a NATO partner. More than than, Turkey plays an apparently key role in US geopolitics for stabilising the Middle East, by making it an example of how a Muslim country can embrase democracy and the free market, and prosper.

More on that story here at the BBC: Deal struck over Turkey-EU talks. The subject is also covered at the European Finance blog, EuroWatch.

Posted at 10:26 PM
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Symantec - the company behind Norton anti-virus software - continues aggressive expansion, with the announcement of a merger deal with software storage company Veritas, in a deal said to be worth $13 billion.

Symantec have acquired nearly a dozen companies over the past 3 years, but this is by far their largest acquisition. According to the BBC in Symantec in $13bn Veritas merger, this latest will:

expand Symantec's reach into the corporate software market and give it a sales staff trained to sell to larger companies.

"Right now, mergers of this type and of this scope--where the two companies are both large--tend to be disruptive," said Todd Cadley, a spokesman for EMC. "Because of the disruption, we will accelerate our gains in the market."

Whilst this could cynically be seen as marketing posture from a rival being left behind, market analysts agree that it cannot be smooth in the shorter term:

Nitsan Hargil, analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, said: "While we believe, longer term, that the acquisition of Veritas could make for an exciting company, we are concerned about the negative impact it will have on Symantec's growth profile."

Posted at 10:16 PM
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Secunia reports a new cross-site scripting vulnerability in Internet Explorer, that even people who downloaded the Windows XP Service Pack 2 update will be vulnerable to.

Using a live example, Secunia suggest that this could be very easily exploited in phishing, allowing phishers not simply to create spoofed websites URLs, but also fake SSL signatures and hijack cookies.

This comes as something of an embarrassment for microsoft, who had lauded the SP2 update as a major security milestone for the company.

In related news, Microsoft's recent acquisition of Giant - an anti-spyware vendor - means that Microsoft will now be able to offer spyware checks for its customers. However, according to the report at Security Focus, Microsoft may charge extra for new security software:

Microsoft's tool, expected to be available within 30 days, initially will be free but the company isn't ruling out charging for future versions. "We're going to be working through the issue of pricing and licensing," said Mike Nash, vice president of Microsoft's security business unit. "We'll come up with a plan and roll that out."

Posted at 10:08 PM
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The foundations for widespread-consumer use internet TV move onwards with a couple of recent reports.

The first is blinkx Unveils Search Engine for TV, in which blinkx has developed a search feature for video media. According to the report:

blinkx captures and indexes the entire video stream directly from the television, consumers can get straight to the exact clip they want.

Consumers can now search and access news, movie trailers, popular multimedia segments and other video formats on demand.

Video Smart Folders (available at http://www.blinkx.tv ) enable users to create intelligent folders that continuously populate themselves with multi-media content, based on the parameters set by the user. The result is that users have on demand access to relevant content. Each Video Smart Folder contains content from multiple sources that is specifically relevant to each individual, and acts as a persistent query. If you want to be notified when a news flash becomes available on the latest developments ... you can customize a search that will automatically download high quality video to your computer.

Sounds interesting, yes?

Well, Yahoo! are not to be left behind. As Gary Price reports at SearchEngineWatch in Yahoo Launches Video Search Prototype, New Media RSS Format, he details how Yahoo! have been developing media search technology to form Yahoo! video search beta.

Gary Price also referrers to other key articles on internet TV and search, which are definitely worth referencing:
Searching Television via Closed-Captioning
Video Search: Google, Yahoo, and MSN
Search Meets TV
The Next Search Titan: Comcast?

Posted at 09:41 PM
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According to a report by Retail Decisions, the UK is on track to double online spending for the Christmas period, in comparison to the previous year. This keeps it in line with US consumer trends, and is in large part suggested as due to more accessible high-speed internet packages.

More on that here: UK tracks US in online shopping

Posted at 07:27 PM
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A report by the Bank of England suggests that Britons are generally coping well with record rising debt, having taken advantage of high house prices and low interest rates to consolidate on existing debts.

However, as reported on the BBC website: UK 'coping with debt repayments'

Low interest rates, a healthy jobs market and high house prices mean few people are having problems, it said.

But the Bank remains concerned about the long-term risks posed by personal debt - which is rising at 15% a year - if economic conditions worsen.

Also of special note is later in the report:

The rapid growth of personal debt in recent years and how people can repay it is a growing issue of debate for the Bank of England.

It is concerned about the effect of personal debt on the long-term financial stability of the UK.

In its most recent Financial Stability Review, published this December, it warned that personal debt could pose a significant long-term risk - if economic conditions change.

"If the macroeconomic outlook were to become significantly weaker, credit risks might increase, particularly on unsecured debt," it warned.

Posted at 07:23 PM
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December 16, 2004

Pretty frightening, really:

President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.

The gun lobby in America argue that gun ownership is essential to US citizens, to allow them to overthrow despotic governments.

But if those very same despotic governments actually persuaded the majority of US citizens that the despots are actually the good guys...

Posted at 07:21 PM
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Students of computer scientist Daniel Bernstein in the autumn Semester were told to search for security flaws in Unix applications - a task that counted toward 60 percent of their grade for the class.

So search they did - and uncovered dozens of security holes across a number of Unix applications, ranging from "minor slipups" to "serious" security vulnerabilities.

Student James Longstreet has their list published on his website.

Whilst the exercise has obviously raised eyebrows in the open source community, Bernstein insists that students of computer science must be able to take responsibility for the code they work with - not least for detecting security problems.

However, as he originally insisted each of the 25 students discover 10 flaws, but only a total of 44 were collected, he is apparently thinking of changing the way he grades the students based on what they learned instead of by quantity.

Posted at 07:09 PM
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December 15, 2004

Microsoft discretely released a new security patch, the update icon of which is sat snugly on the deskbar.

According to Security Focus, there are 5 main patches here:

1. MS04-041: A flaw in WordPad that is patched for Windows XP, 2000, 2003 and NT.

2. MS04-042: A vulnerability in DHCP for Windows NT that could allow remote code execution and DoS attacks.

3. MS04-043: A vulnerability in HyperTerminal for all Windows versions.

4. MS04-044: Covers vulnerabilities in the Windows Kernel and the infamous Local Security Authority Subsystem (LSASS), which has been particularly open to buffer overflow attacks.

5. MS04-045: Another buffer overflow vulnerability, this time in Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS).

This fix (MS04-040) is a "critical" update for all versions of Windows bar Win XP SP2 and Windows 2003.

Posted at 08:51 PM
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In Australian, the new Surveillance Devices Act will apparently allow law enforcement officers there to install spyware and trojans on the computers of suspected criminals. This apparently applies to both national and state police forces.

However, it has been suggested that competent computer users would readily be able to spot inexplicable use of their PC resources for such software. Also, Trendmicro suggests that current security software will usually circumvent crude attempts at computer surveillance by such methods.

I have to admit, though, I've often presumed that vendors such as Zone Labs - who supply the popular firewall software Zonealarm - already would have an agreement with US intelligence agencies, for allowing any such covert methods to automatically bypass the firewall.

What is interesting about the Australian case is the transparency of the legislation being dealt with.

Anyway, more on the story down under here: Australian police get go-ahead on spyware

Posted at 08:41 PM
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Maryland judge, Durke Thompson, ruled that a Maryland law being used to prosecute alleged e-mail spammer, New York firm, First Choice Internet, violated the US constitution on interstate commerce.

According to the CNet article: Antispam law ruled unconstitutional

First Choice Internet was sued by a George Washington University law student, Eric Menhart, who formed a Maryland company to file lawsuits against what he believes to be offensive marketing practices. But the judge ruled that Menhart spent most of his time in Washington, D.C., not Maryland, and it would be unfair to require a sender of e-mail to guess where the correspondence would be read.

Ultimately, the judge ruled that First Choice Internet "did not intentionally direct their e-mails" specifically to residents of Maryland, thus there was no case of a prosecution to succeed.

Judges in California and Washington State have already rejected anti-spamming prosecutions based on state laws, only to have the rulings overturned by appeal, based on details in the federal Can-Spam Act. The Maryland state law apparently targets fraudulent and deceptive spam specifically in its legislation, which remains an exception to other state legislation.

Posted at 08:32 PM
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In a press release, Intelliseek listed key metrics for their analysis of the blogosphere, using their Blogpulse blog search engine - which claims to search over 2 million online blogs.

According to their analysis, the most popular sources and references were:

Top people/personalities

President George Bush (637,646 citations);
Sen. John Kerry (411,977);
Harry Potter (333,418);
Britney Spears (119,661)
Michael Moore (111,876)

Top News Sources:

Yahoo! News (205,093 citations)
The New York Times (188,596)
BBC (161,805)
CNN (144,560)
The Washington Post (113,417)


Top Blogs:

BoingBoing: A Directory of Wonderful Things (23,836 citations);
DailyKos political blog (21,530);
Instapundit political blog (21,391),
The Drudge Report news/political blog (19,220);
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters (18,901).

Top Web Sites:

Hello.com (571,569 citations)
Quizilla.com (440,364)
Memegen.net (286,362)
Amazon.com (255,152)
Go-Quiz.com (217,443)

Posted at 07:21 PM
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GEICO's main legal challenge against Google's allowance of AdWords terms being triggered by trademark names, has been initially dismissed by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema.

According to US Rejects Key Part of GEICO Case Against Google:

Brinkema said the case would proceed, but on the narrower question of whether Google should be barred from displaying advertisements for other insurers that contain the word "GEICO."

Google says it already has a policy to exclude such ads. An attorney for Google told Brinkema the policy was "not perfect" but that was insufficient ground for finding against Google.

An attorney for GEICO told reporters outside court that Brinkema had given both sides part of what they wanted.

Brinkema adjourned the case for several weeks while she writes an opinion and encouraged both sides to continue settlement talks.

Posted at 07:17 PM
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December 14, 2004

Research firm Gartner has issued a public warning that businesses should avoid allowing the Google Desktop search to be installed on business machines, until more can be ascertained about the security and privacy issues involved in using it. Gartner instead suggest waiting for an Enterprise release.

According to CNet in Gartner: Google desktop search not enterprise-ready

Responding to Gartner's comments, Dave Girouard, Google's general manager of enterprise products, said that the tool was never intended to be an enterprise-ready application in its current incarnation and that the company is working on a more robust version for large-scale deployments.

Overall, a sensible precaution worth taking note of.

Posted at 10:08 PM
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A new variant of the Zafi worm appeared today, masquerading as a Christmas greeting. W32/Zafi.D is usually attached as a .php file, which most e-mail checkers will filter out. Also, it remains a variant that major anti-virus should be easily capable of dealing with. The main danger lays in home owners who have not kept up to date with their virus updates. Not believed to pose a widespread threat, no virus has apparently yet succeeded in using a seasonal message to rapidly spread it. So, Ho! Ho! Ho! to Zafi. :)

Zafi itself holds an interesting background, as covered by Cnet: Zafi worm purports to be Christmas greeting

The first variant of the Zafi worm was discovered in April, and the worm has evolved a great deal since then. Zafi.A tried only to send itself to e-mail addresses inside Hungary. It did not contain a destructive payload. Two months later, Zafi.B was released, and this variant was able to terminate antivirus and firewall applications and "speak" in numerous languages, including English, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

A previous variant of the virus, Zafi.C, discovered in late October, was programmed to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks on Google, Microsoft and the Web site of the Hungarian Prime Minister. Once active, the Zafi.C version scanned an infected computer's Windows Address Book and hard drive for e-mail addresses. The worm attempted to spread by composing e-mails using a complex set of rules and sending them out with its built-in SMTP engine.

Posted at 09:26 PM
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Yahoo! continues to openly build the foundations of its mobile marketing arm, by reaching an agreement to offer Nextel customers a suite of tools and products under the banner of "Yahoo! Mobile Internet". This will apparently include e-mail, instant messaging, games and news content.

More information on that here: Yahoo! and Nextel Join Forces to Launch Yahoo! Mobile Internet Across Nextel's Digital Wireless Network

Posted at 09:05 PM
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In a special meeting of the board at ICANN, preliminary approval was given for negotiating the commercial release of .jobs and .mobi domain names.

.mobi is designed specically for mobile devices, and is already in competition with .mb domain names, a national TLD for the Northern Mariana Islands, which is already being marketed as a domain for mobile devices.

More information on the issues here: ICANN: .jobs & .mobi given Preliminary Okay

Posted at 08:53 PM
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Martin Mullen, a Canadian who led a piracy ring that sold tens of thousands of hacked smart cards to allow free DirectTV access, was today given a 7-year sentence and orderd to pay $24 million.

Already a well known thorn in the side of the satellite industry, Martin Mullen remained outside the reaches of US justice - until a private investigator discovered documents in Mullen's rubbish, detailing a business trip under an assumed name to Florida. Once Mullen arrived at Tampa International Airport, the tipped-off US authorities arrested him.

The sentence is considered particularly harsh, in view of DirectTVs claims of financial losses in the face of Martin Mullen's piracy ring. However, his daughter, Nicole McKenzie, claims that he was stitched up, and that her father only pleaded guilty after coercion from US Federal Agents that they would not seek prosecution of his family.

More on that story here: DirecTV hacker sentenced to seven years

Posted at 08:42 PM
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Mandatory retirement for the under-65's is to be scrapped from 2005, government ministers have announced, according to a BBC report: Ban on forced retirement under 65.

This is a compromise between Age Discrimination proposals - which when motted last year initially suggested allowing workers to stay on until 70 - and business leaders, who argued that allowing older workers to stay on would burden unnecessary costs on employers.

According to the report:

The British Chambers of Commerce welcomed the latest proposal. "This move today is the best of both worlds," it said. "Employers have the ability to define the end point of the employer-employee relationship and employees have flexibility with a right to request to work past the age of 65."

But Age Concern said imposing a retirement age of 65 was 'cowardly' and a 'complete u-turn'. "This makes a mockery of the Government's so-called commitment to outlawing ageism," said Gordon Lishman, of Age Concern

Posted at 08:36 PM
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No surprises here - the Bank of England left interest rates unchanged at 4.75% this month, and will not review the issue again until February 2005, to ascertain the impact of holiday and New Year sales spending.

However, if a snap General Election is called in the UK for Spring 2005, as has been suggested recently by a number of papers, then the politically unwelcome rate rise could well be left until after the election.

With inflation rising, though currently well within government targets, it remains to be seen how much pressure it may build up against the UK economy.

Conversely, in the US, the Federal Reserve increased rates by a quarter percentile, to 2.25%. This comes in the wake of tentative signs of a strengthening economy, with employment figures still encouraging.

The US economy continues to present uncertain signs, and recent rises in oil prices have caused increases in energy prices, which will put inevitable stress on it.

Posted at 08:21 PM
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In Fewer flaws in Linux?, Joe Brockmeier reports on a Coverty report on the new Linux 2.6 kernel - and finds that there are remarkably few bugs in the system.

In a study that too over 4 years to compile:

The project found 985 bugs in the 5.7 million lines of code that make up the latest version of the Linux core operating system, or kernel. A typical commercial program of similar size usually has more than 5,000 flaws or defects, according to data from Carnegie Mellon University.

Although there is no current data on the number of software flaws in Windows XP, an earlier report published at the Register makes for very detailed reading on the comparison of Microsoft vs Linux: Security Report: Windows vs Linux

Posted at 02:36 PM
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Overture sponsored comScore to investigate consumer habits with electronics products, and in Impact of Search Engine Usage on Consumer Buying came to the conclusion:

Vast Majority of Search-Influenced Buying Occurs Either Offline or in Subsequent Internet User Sessions

So the initial assumption might be that consumers come back to a vendor after looking at various consumer issues, such as pricing, opening hours, and delivery options.

However, obivously this create issues for PPC management, in that they are unlikely to be able to directly associate clicks with sales, when dealing with return customers.

What's also interesting, on top of this, is that Andy Beal - of Search engine Lowdown - reports at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in Chicago, that JupiterResearch analyst, Niki Scevak, apparently stated to him this little tidbit:

one in three searches are of a commercial nature and of those, one in seven click on a paid/sponsored listing

Barry Schwart,z at the Search Engine Roundtable, covers analysis of search marketer behaviour in more depth, as reported from Niki Scevak's session at SES Analyzing the Behavior of Search Marketers.

Posted at 02:20 PM
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A very interesting cautionary tale in Eight Months of Click Fraud in Oregon, in which an online marketer found repeated ad clicks originating from a Portland IP.

According to the article at Clickz, the extra clicks amounted to clickfraud costing the Oregon company around $300 per month. So they went in search of a solution, and came up with www.whoslclickingwho.com:

For $30 dollars a month, WhosClickingWho allowed Hendison to get more data on the suspect IP address and send a customized pop-up window to the person behind it when he or she clicked on his ad. The message, which Hendison wrote, read, "Stop, you weasel! I know who you are and have reported you to the proper authorities."

"I never got another click from that address afterward," Hendison said.

Posted at 02:05 PM
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The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation (SEMPO), released a report suggesting that the overall search marketing market will be worth $4 billion in 2004.

According to the SEMPO press release:

The research, conducted by Executive Summary Consulting, Inc., is based on an extensive survey of 288 search engine advertisers and marketing agencies, executed via IntelliSurvey, Inc., as well as in-depth interviews with 30 leading industry experts. The final report breaks down advertiser spending for 2004 in several areas: $3.058 billion to search media companies; $618 million on SEM-related in-house expenses within advertising corporations; $380 million to search engine marketing agencies, and $30 million in SEM technology licensing fees. The report also estimated that marketers will spend (including both in-house and external media, service and licensing expenses) $3.342 billion on paid placement campaigns; $492 million on organic search engine optimization; $182 million on paid inclusion, and $72 million on SEM-related technology services.

Not only does this report reflect on the credible strength of the search marketing industry, but it also adds credibility to SEMPO, who have faced severe criticism this year from major industry figures for failing to deliver anything for member subscriptions.

Posted at 01:58 PM
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Microsoft finally opened it's doors to search, with the release of it's beta search suite, which incorporates desktop search, updates the original toolbar, and offers toolbar search for Outlook as well.

According to the press release at Microsoft: Microsoft Introduces MSN Toolbar Suite Beta With Desktop Search :

Quick, precise retrieval of desktop files. Consumers can quickly and easily search the thousands of files on their PCs, including Outlook Contacts or Calendar files, Adobe PDFs files, or Microsoft Office Word or PowerPoint® files. As a result, consumers will save time and increase their productivity.

Information when and where it's needed. The MSN toolbars save time, allowing consumers to find precisely what they need with less effort, when and where they need it, with less effort and within seconds. The MSN toolbars are conveniently designed to work with Outlook, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer and the Windows desktop. The MSN Toolbars also give consumers quick access to MSN Messenger, MSN Hotmail® and MSN Spaces, enabling them to initiate common communication tasks right from the bar, including e-mail, instant messaging and inserting URLs into Spaces blogs.

Familiar interfaces and useful results. Consumers can use desktop search when browsing files in Windows in a comfortable and familiar format, enabling them to open files in their associated application directly from their desktop search results and enabling quick access to actions such as managing, sharing, deleting or playing files.

New MSN Search service. MSN Toolbar Suite displays Web search results from the recently launched MSN Search Beta release,* a new algorithmic search engine built by Microsoft and designed to help consumers find precisely the information they are looking for by providing more useful answers to their questions and more control over their search experience.

Gary Price at Search Engine Watch adds to the release, by noting in Microsoft's "Broader" Search Strategy that a preview of Messenger 7 also includes a search box (as does Yahoo!'s messenger):

The rectangular box, embedded in a preview version of the company's MSN Messenger 7.0, is a search field. Users will be able to launch Internet searches directly from that field, automatically opening a Web browser to display the relevant results on an Internet search site...The feature sends people to Microsoft's MSN Search service.

MSNBC also covers the main story with more vivid coverage in For Softies, Search Is the New Black, with a nod to the fact that Bill Gates apparently doesn't like the attention that Google gets instead of Microsoft:

Bill Gates has a Google thing. When I asked him about the search competition last summer, he turned on the sarcasm. "We'll never be as cool as them. Every conference you go to, there they are dressed in black, and no one is cooler!" Clearly Gates's dander was up, not only because the Google upstarts were eating his lunch, but they were press darlings as well. Behind the rant was a taunting subtext: watch me. Bill, you see, had been busy figuring how to get his lunch back.

The first fruits of Gates's response are now ripe enough to consume. The beta version of MSN Web Search debuted in November, and this week MSN Desktop Search comes online. Though neither threatens to topple Google's reign, both are credible products. Not bad for an 18-month crash course in an area that the company had previously neglected with the complacency only a monopolist can muster. "It wasn't clear to me that we could catch up in that time frame," says MSN head Yusuf Mehdi.

All sounds great - but the only thing that nags me is...is it all Firefox compatible? :)

(NOTE: Copernic's Desktop search is now apparently Firefox friendly: Copernic Releases Firefox-Supportin' Copernic Desktop Search)

More seriously, though: Do we yet have a confirmed release of the MSN Search Beta?

Posted at 01:41 PM
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When two Standford students originally took time from computer science to study the building of digital libraries, they created the foundations of what is now the billion-dollar Google brand.

Now Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have apparently returned to their roots at Standford, with a beta project for the extensive digitising of the extensive university libraries belonging to Stanford, Oxford, Harvard, Michigan, and the New York Public Libraries.

As reported by John Beatelle in Google Library: Talk About a Long Tail... he discusses how search technology applied to physical documents - as reported before at Platinax in Google approaches media challenges - is being used to power this massive undertaking.

As John Battelle comments:

The implications here are significant. First, the idea that the world's knowledge, as held through books and libraries, is opening up to all via a web browser cannot be understated. It's one thing to have the an original copy of The Origin of Species on the shelves, where students and interested parties have to travel to find it. It's another to have it available to everyone via a search index and your web browser. Second, this move clearly puts Google in the category of innovator when it comes to adding information to their index. But it also raises significant business model questions, one that are both exciting and unanswered.

Gary Price provides more detailed information on the project:
Google Partners with Oxford, Harvard & Others to Digitize Libraries

Posted at 01:25 PM
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In an article in the Economist, a report by the Hays Group highlights the growing disparity between CEO remuneration packages supposed to be linked to performance, and the actual company performance.

Whilst stock price rises in the 1990's were clearly coupled with performance-based remuneration packages, even when the stock market as a whole kept falling, US executives were especially receiving bonuses - even when the company's they steered were failing.

Additionally, there are marked differences between US and European comparisons:

The Hay Group reckons that a European chief executive's basic salary is much the same as that of his counterpart across the Atlantic. But variable pay adds only 150% to that, as against 400% in America. And far more of the European's package is in bonuses and free shares linked to the performance of the company relative to its sector or an index, rather than in options which relate rewards solely to the movement of the company's share price.

Issues of disclosure are likely to help redress the balance in favour of shareholders - the European Commission stated last month that it expects European companies to show all the components of their directors' fixed and variable pay. And in the US, new accounting rules brought in following the Enron scandal, will now see "expense�h share options liable for taxation, closing a loophole of "easy" bonuses.

Posted at 01:11 PM
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December 13, 2004

Halifax Internet Banking has become the latest target in a range of phishing and trojan attacks aimed at British banks. In a mass e-mail sent at 7am GMT, the e-mail contains a link to a site that fraudulently tries to trick the surfer into thinking they are on a valid Halifax internet banking website - and records their otherwise secret internet banking login details. The site also has a trojan embedded in the page, for stealing further user password information for other sites the surfer may use that require a personal login.

Like most phishing e-mails, the user is not addressed by their customer name. However, as phishing are aimed at general users, although the more web-savvy surfer may be able to spot the phishing attack, there is bound to be a wide consumer base very vulnerable to phishing as a method for fraud.

It remains a glaring point of note that no bank I am a member of has ever issued a letter to me, warning of the dangers of phishing, and how to recognise an authenticate e-mail from the bank.

So long as the majority of banking customers have no idea what a phishing e-mail is or looks like, and so long as the major banks avoid addressing the issue openly with their customers, then this can only encourage further phishing attacks until finally addressed.

Although some banks do have warnings on their websites - for example, Halifax now has a warning graphic on their main page, and Barclays has small warning text at the foot of their home page - some banks don't even mention the issue on their homepages - for example HSBC, Nationwide, and Yorkshire Bank. It appears that high street banks do not offer warnings on phishing dangers - until *after* they have been explictly targeted. Even then, as with the Barclays site, warnings are not very apparent. This is not enough

The problem is that the required warnings are not prominent enough, where used at all. What is required is a more concerted consumer awareness program to alert customers about the dangers of phishing. In my opinion, this can only comes from a letter from the bank itself, warning of the issue to internet banking customers.

This is a graphic of the e-mails ent out this morning:

EDIT: The following day I received a phishing attack from Barclays -here's an image of it. Note that the e-mail is not personalised - a clear indicator of phishing.

Posted at 09:33 AM
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December 11, 2004

In a major coup for Paypal, iTunes will now accept payment for its online download services using the Paypal merchant processor.

Paypal apparently has around 56 registered users, who in 2004 Q3 transacted a record ��87 million, 70% of which was through EBay.

More on the story here: Paypal and Apple iTunes link-up

Posted at 10:46 PM
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Toyota seem to be having fun imagining future possibilities for personal transport. While the UK government considers adding an extra lane to the M1, to allow only multipassenger vehicles, Toyota designers have decided that it's better to look out for number 1.

The BBC covers their coming show Robotic pods take on car design

Somehow I doubt we're going to see the Toyota i-foot on the M1 anytime soon, though. :)

And speaking of the i-foot - the Sedan Chair of the 21st century?

Posted at 10:29 PM
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The dotcom boom and bust years was the commercial internet's baptism of fire, that saw corporate giants humbled, some entrepeneurs get lucky, and the internet itself demand that internet business is done on internet terms, rather than vast inflated visions with little justifiable practical application.

Business Plan Archive is a site that aims to present for posterity a record of those tumultuous days, by way of an archive of actual business plans put into effect. With physical data likely stored at the Manuscript Library at the University of Maryland, the project itself is supported by Robert H Smith School of Business, in cooperation with the Center for History and New Media at the George Mason University,

I wonder if Jeff Bezos will submit his? :)

Posted at 10:19 PM
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Mobile just looks bigger and bigger all the time.

For a start, Reuters offers some interesting stats in Mobile Phone Users Double Since 2000, that Nick Wilson at Threadwatch conveniently breaks down into core stats in Some Interesting Mobile Stats:

• There are 1.5Bn mobile subscribers worldwide
• That's 25% of the world with a mobile
• Developing countries account for 56% of that.
• There are 1.18Bn landline subscribers - notice mobile has overtaken that.
• There are Only 700M net connections

Nick also reports on the VentureCapital article Coming Soon: Desktop In Your Pocket, where Kevin Laws speculates that using mobile devices to carry out desktop search would become the next big battleground - marry desktop and mobile search applications.

Posted at 09:38 PM
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Seth Goldin asks: Why ask why?

It's a rather astute piece of observation of consumer-unfriendly policies inflicted by bureaucratic method. And a call to make frontlines staff more inviting to answer difficult questions:

"You know, sir, I have no idea why you have to do that. But I can tell you that I'll find out before the end of the day."

I recently saw this in action - my local sports facility is an extremely modest affair, but they recently upgraded their gym. I need to compensate for a 14 hour day in front of the PC, so it seemed a good idea to join.

Only, to join, I had to sign a disclaimer, stating that I completely accept that if I suffer injury as a result of the centre�fs negligence , then I waiver all right to legal recourse to claim compensation.

I stood there and anguished - I needed to get some regular work-out time - but I found the disclaimer completely unacceptable - I couldn�ft sign. The facility was losing a sale.

The woman at the desk told me she's signed up over 4,000 people to the gym over the past few years, and I suddenly 2 people had asked about the disclaimer on the same day, and refused to sign. I was the second.

She promised to find out.

Her reply was illuminating - apparently gyms can set themselves up for false claims without a disclaimer. In other words, the disclaimer was set up to prevent opportunistic compensation claims, from people "tripping over dumbbells", etc. The disclaimer is supposed to act as a deterrent - but if any real acts of negligence came before a court, then the disclaimer itself would be held to be invalid if it contravened existing legislation on compensation and injuries.

I liked the answer - I signed - the sale was processed. :)

Posted at 09:18 PM
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December 10, 2004

Danny Sullivan continues his habit of detailed analysis on search engine news, presenting possibly the most comprehensive appraisal of Yahoo! desktop search aspirations in Yahoo Details Desktop Search Plans.

Aside from detailing that the Yahoo! desktop search will be a licensed form of the X1, it will also be able to index more files than the current Google Desktop release. Danny Sullivan also suggests that the Yahoo! offering could be more consumer friendly, by its inclusion of such features as integration into the task bar menu. However, with Google's developer tools open to the internet, it can surely only be a matter of time before the basics of Google Desktop search are developed into a more consumer-specialised application.

Yahoo! desktop search is apparently due for public release in January 2005.

Posted at 11:15 PM
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At internet.com, there's an interesting article discussing a few of Google's more recent patents, which focus particularly on the monetisation of search media.

Aside from suggesting that Google are looking to extend their business model, to provide from Google News via subscriptions, the article also illustrates how Google are trying to come to terms with the Digital Media Explosion.

No doubt that developing and refining search for digitial media formats, such as CD and DVD, as well as magazine and news formats, is going to be a very powerful asset, as the internet and ever more accessible broadband pushes the internet deeper into different media formats, for presenting information to consumers online.

Posted at 11:03 PM
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Johnny Moore waxes lyrical about Adam Curry's move to Britain. With a quick line he lets loose a simple definition of "Podcast = online radio show in mp3 format".

I can only presume that I'm not the only person to see Podcasts herald the smllest glimpse of what is to come, in the form of personal broadcasting via internet TV...

Posted at 10:46 PM
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Nick Wreden makes a highly critical report of American credit card giant, MBNA. Citing a recent New York Times article, MBNA are apparently about to switch all 50 million existing client's VISA and Mastercard accounts, to American Express, without their permission - an act that will see all existing client VISA and Mastercard auto-billing voided once the move is completed.

In a move he labels "Dumb Ass Branding", Nick also criticises MBNA's significant backing of Bush in the recent and bitterly fought US Presidential Elections, which he condemns as an overly political gesture imposed upon existing clients - who may not necessarily support political backing of any particular candidate.

Posted at 10:37 PM
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Adam Penenberg at Wired covers the issue of embedded advertising in RSS feeds in his article RSS: Show Me the Money.

Whilst it doesn't offer any particular insights into how the advertising can be applied and extended, he does cover a lot of good general points, and stresses the importance of how targeted the advertising is - even coining the use of the term "Alert-engine marketing".

Posted at 10:20 PM
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I reported in Sun sues little guy over Java about how Ted Neward was informed by Sun's legal team that his site, javageeks.com, was in contravention of Sun's trademark use of "Java".

Well, Ted now reports that Mark Herring, Director Community Strategy at Sun, has since been in touch, apologised for the debacle, and completely distanced Sun from the actions of the lawyer.

In short, with a few cosmetic changes to the domain registration, to ensure that it's not mistaken for a business registered site associated with Java, and everything is all sweet and fine again.

Ted says he's now looking forward to simply putting his head down to work on "a few JDK 1.5 papers to post".

Posted at 10:12 PM
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December 09, 2004

Jim Allchin, group vice president of the Windows platform division, publicly admitted that Google had been pinching key Microsoft staff:
Try Google to find alums of Microsoft

When I read information like that, I can't help but think back to specualtive comments I made in public on the SearchEngineWatch forums, on a possible future Google Operating System within 5 years: Going on the record

Microsoft is losing market share, and Longhorn is continually delayed further back. The days of MS dominating home PCs is dying away, and MS only have their appalling security record to blame.

Now imagine what a kick Google could give by investing in Google Linux.

Google could easily see it accepted and shipping with new PCs, too. It would also be a superb way to ensure Google captured users for its own ad base. After all, from toolbar to desktop and backing Mozilla - why not OS in 5 years time? Or, at least, a strong sponsorship of one.

Posted at 11:07 PM
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John Battelle reveals some interesting claimed Google metrics, in Majestic on GOOG: Brother, Can You Share a Dime?.

According to his sources at Majestic Research:

• 98 percent of GOOG revs are from paid search. 65% of revs are domestic.
• Q3 domestic growth driven by 7% quarter to quarter increase in paid introductions (paid clicks), to 964 million, and a 2% quarter to quarter increase in average price per click, to 5%.
• Average CPC: 54 cents, up a cent quarter to quarter.
• Revenue per query grew 8.3% quarter to quarter to nine cents. (That's right, every search we do on Google makes them nearly a dime, on average).
• Overall US searches grew 6% quarter to quarter, Google powered searches grew by .2%.
• In Q2, 51.9% of all searches on the Google Network included at least one paid listing.
• Of those, 32% include at least one paid introduction.

Interestingly enough, Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch takes the figures to task, suggesting that the data is likely making sweeping generalisations of comScore metrics on the number of searches, and divided the public figures on Google's AdWord's revenue to produce an overly simplistic claim of Google earning 18c per click.

Posted at 10:57 PM
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SearchEngineWatch blog writer Gary Price notes in Google Goes Down to Georgia a story at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has Google moving servers and staff into a custom-built datacenter by now defunct dotcom, Exodus.

Google would apparently like the news to remain secret, but the move was let-slip by John Rice,CEO of GE Energy and outgoing chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

Posted at 10:52 PM
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According to the CNet release, PalmSource to buy into China, Linux, PDA software development company PalmSource has bought a 10% stake in Chinese Linux development company, China MobileSoft.

It'll be interesting to see whether this actually translates as any kind of aggressive front opening in the mobile device market for Linux OS and applications.

Posted at 10:49 PM
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According to an article at Betanews, beta-testing of the new Windows Server platform, currently running under the title of "R2", came with information of a target release date of October 2005.

Which means December 2005. Or January 2006. Or...

Posted at 10:45 PM
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Doug Turner, project leader of Minimo - a slimmed down version of Mozilla's browser platform for mobile devices - claims that there are two mobile companies already using Minimo, and to expect announcements on it's syndicated use in the mobile market.

Minimo 0.3 is already due for launch in January 2005, and claims better web navigation for users.

According to the article Mozilla aims for mobile browser market:

Minimo developers have already found a solution to the problem of rendering Web pages on small devices. This feature was included in both version 0.1 and 0.2 of Minimo. Turner said this solution is already better than some products on the market.

"A lot of browsers ignore frames or have limited JavaScript support--they do terrible jobs," he said. "With Minimo, if it renders OK in Firefox, it will render OK in Minimo."

Posted at 10:39 PM
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Security firm Secunia warns that all known browsers suffer from a potentially devastating flaw - in which:

a website can inject content into another site's window if the target name of the window is known. This can e.g. be exploited by a malicious website to spoof the content of a pop-up window opened on a trusted website.

Surprising, although Internet Explorer is finger as vulnerable, so are all major browser platforms, such as Mozilla 1.7.3 and Mozilla Firefox 1.0, Opera, Konqueror, and Safari.

This Window Injection Vulnerability is further covered on the Secunia website:

Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox Window Injection Vulnerability

Posted at 10:10 PM
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The State University of New York has apparently conducted a study showing that laptops can - at least theoretically - threaten fertility, by raising the temperature of the scrotum.

ZNet covers the story in Study: Laptop heat a threat to fertility.

Still, I guess it has to be more fun than condoms when it comes to contraception. ;)

Posted at 10:05 PM
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December 08, 2004

When Homecall questioned 5,000 people this year, across Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and London, an interesting set of statistics came up.

According to the coverage of this in This is London, when asked why they moved to broadband internet:

• 33% - download music,
• 23% - download porn,
• 12% - download music videos,
• 9% - listen to online radio,
• 8% - download movie trailers
• 5% - share information with family and friends.

In other words, a quarter of people questioned claimed that they primarily moved to broadband to better access and utilise porn. :)

Posted at 10:43 PM
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Yahoo! makes a foray into the world of mobiles, buying up Wuf Networks last month - company without a product, but instead staff and software assets that Yahoo! obviously feel they can capitalise on.

Looks like mobile devices are going to provide one of the hottest battlegrounds for the future of marketing. I;ve already covered this in Mobile Marketing, and it's a reality that is slowly shaping up in front of us.

Posted at 10:40 PM
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AOL Chief Executive Officer, Richard Parsons, announced at a UBS Media Conference in New York, that they expect advertising revenue over the next year to increase around 33%, creating revenue of around $1 billion for the company.

The move is almost certainly part spin, part extended Public Relations damage control, part marketing, and part advertising for a company losing its subscriber base.

However, what underlies the optimistic predictions is the general movement of marketing budgets to online sales. Simply put, advertising online is working, and agencies burned by the dotcom boom and bust years are finally returning to the realities of the internet - and its opportunities.

Posted at 10:32 PM
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I covered the story of the Lycos "make love not spam" anti-spammer campaign with Lycos to DDoS spammers, and then in Lycos DDoS denied described how the Lycos site was effectively dead in the water.

Well, apparently it turns out that certain targeted sites decided to redirect themselves to the Lycos anti-spamming site - effectively turning the anti-spam sreensaver against the very source originating it in the first place.

If the idea of a DDoS attack being redirected at the source wasn't news enough in itself, the whole campaign has taken an ugly turn: ZNet reports F-Secure's director of anti-virus research, Mikko Hyppönen, as stating that a spoof Lycos screensaver is now being distributed, which contains a trojan for stealing and passing on passwords and credit card information.

Truly an extraordinary example of how good intentions can backfire - and how creatively the internet underworld can defend itself against corporate attack.

Posted at 10:23 PM
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According to Internet Retailer:

Online spending on U.S. Visa credit and debit cards for online purchases rose 34% year-to-year for the week ended Dec. 5, to $2.67 billion from $1.99 billion, Visa reports. Total spending on Visa cards rose 19%.

The number of e-commerce transactions on Visa payment cards rose 27.5% year-to-year for the same week, to 33.2 million from 26.04 million, Visa says.

Visa�fs e-commerce figures include both b2b and b2c payment volumes.

What this shows is the irracible march of online sales, as the consumer is empowered with real choice of products and prices - very much in the vein of how the local grocer was squeezed out by the better ranges and pricing of supermarkets, so is e-commerce challenging physical stores in their entirety.

This story also comes on the back of research by Hitware, which according to a report at Marketing Vox, also shows that there is a real movement to online shopping from people living in rural areas.

The bottom line: freedom of choice empowers consumers. And the internet tremendously empowers the consumer.

Posted at 10:16 PM
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According to a CNet article, Adware has allegedly been targeting...other Adware.

DirectRevenue is Adware that apparently asks explicitly for permission to "remove, disable or render inoperative other adware programs resident on your computer."

Avenue Media has launched a suit against DirectRevenue, claiming that the DirectRevenue program has caused the loss of a million of its own installations, resulting in a loss of revenue in the region of $10,000 per day.

Interesting news all round.

Posted at 10:11 PM
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December 06, 2004

Joe Brockmeier at ZNet comments on the long haul wait for the next Debian version - Debian Sarge - which according to the posted developer updates won't be seeing an official release until well into 2005.

However, he does make some good points on the stability on the currently available test version, and lauds the advantages of the general availablity of such releases, as opposed to simply waiting for a full OS to be dumped on the wider community.

Posted at 10:34 PM
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December 05, 2004

Marks and Spencers launched a big Christmas promo and tried to lure Christmas shoppers to buy with 20% off in a "one-day spectacular".

Unfortunately for them, people were unable to order from the chain online during the time in question.

M&S blamed a surge in traffic to their site.

A wry smile and a little cynicism hardly seems appropriate at this time of year. :)

Still, they're not alone - I've covered before issues I've had with online purchases - especially from US web hosting companies:

Ordering Online: Does yours work?

Posted at 11:29 PM
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According to the BBC:

Apple iTunes 'overcharging in UK'

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has referred Apple's iTunes service to the European Commission on grounds that it overcharges UK customers.

The move follows a complaint from Which? that iTunes charges UK users 20% more than those in France and Germany.

Which?, formerly the Consumer Association, also complained that the UK customers were barred from logging on to the French and German sites.

The OFT is asking the European Commission to rule on the matter.

Just another reminder of "rip-off Britain" - this will be an interesting case to watch.

Posted at 11:26 PM
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As if search could not become more diversely applied to the world - surprise! - the University of Massachusetts is now developing search for handwritten documents:

Researchers create tool to automatically search handwritten historical documents

So what? Surely this is just a novelty? Not quite - note that this method relies on the use of comparing images to a database of words. Effectively, we're talking about the application of image search here, grabbing useful information from static images. I'm sure that won't be lost on too many people in SEO.

Posted at 11:21 PM
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My recent foray into speculation on the Google Sandbox seems to have raised a few eyebrows.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the Google Sandbox appears to be some kind of "filter" applied by Google to slow, delay, and frustrate the manipulation of rankings by use of artifical link building, amongst other things.

The Google Sandbox can become a chronic problem for newer sites, which may have difficulty becoming ranked for keywords they are linked to for up to 3-4 months.

For many sites, this is not an issue - but in a commercial environment is can be a very serious problem. The inability to rank on Google for any kind of commercially useful search terms can effectively render a new commerce website invisible to internet traffic - and prevent profitable operation, unless signed up for additional advertising, such as through Google's Adsense (how handy :) ).

There's a lot of debate about how the Google Sandbox may actually be applied - for example, is it to links? What about sites?

It can be difficult to test this properly, because commercial level link building involves getting links from a variety of sources. So how can you tell which links are and are not working best?

Recently I built a series of websites and placed links on them - and despite the pages having been indexed and cached, the anchor text (keywords in the links) have not impacted Google's rankings - certainly not at the time of writing.

Yet if someone joins the free Digital Point Co-op Advertising Network, they can impact Google's rankings fairly quickly. I've tested this for myself, and it will certainly cause fairly immediate movement for search terms that are not too competitive.

Question is: what does the Co-op Network offer that custom link building cannot? What quality is it that makes Google regard some of the links in the co-op network as having "authority" enough to impact SERPs sooner, rather than later?

My suggestion in Google Sandboxed: solved? was that PageRank could be the determining factor in it all - not so much that a couple of higher PR pages was enough - but if you could get links from a wider number of higher PageRank pages, then Google would be forced into accepting the linkage as "authorative".

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Rountable disagreed, suggesting that it was entirely the age of the target page that was the determining factor. A couple of people at the Threadwatch thread on the issue suggested it could be due to other factors.

Ultimately, other variables could be involved: automated WHOIS queries of how long domains have been active - or simply Google self-referencing it's own index - could see Google awarding greater authority to sites and/or pages simply on the basis of age of site, or even just the age of the links from the pages of such sites.

What complicates it more is that more established sites will tend towards having higher PageRank - so the role of PageRank in this could be incidental.

Either way, the Google Sandbox remains both an intriguing and frustrating process - and the ultimate secret of whether Google has a main engine, for designating "authority" to impact rankings out of the sandbox, remains locked from public view.

Of all the comments I've seen on the issue, longcal911 of the DigitalPoint Forums made one of the shortest sanest statements on the matter I've read:

If I were GG, I would trust no one. I�fd assume that every new site was out to deceive me. So, I�fd sandbox every new site until I knew more about it. If I started to see links from other sites, and saw regularly added content, and if I saw general stability, I�fd let it out of the box and watch it closely.

Over time, if all seemed normal, I would trust it more. As the site matured, and once it gained my full trust, I would take clear notice of the sites (pages) it links to.

If another new site came along, and if the first (fully trusted) site linked to it, this would boost my trust in the new site. In other words, the new site would *inherit* my trust. I would therefore crawl this new site more often, and I would analyze its pages faster, and I would remove some of the �erank inhibitors�f I had placed on it, allowing it to rise to its natural position in listings.

I think that if Google trusts a site, it can do a lot of things (like SEO) and not be penalized. I have a close friend who I trust completely. I might say to him, �gI�fm going away for the weekend. Here are the keys to my house�h. And because I trust him, I trust his friends.

His friends inherit my trust. This is the exact behavior I see in Google, although I�fm still waiting for keys to the house. :-)

So what is behind the Sandbox? One main factor dancing all other variables? Or a gentle mix of a handful of different factors? Hopefully this thread at WebmasterWorld will help begin to deliver empirical results.

Posted at 10:37 PM
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I mentioned in Lycos to DDoS spammers about how Lycos had set up a screensaver for the purposes of setting up DDoS attacks against alleged spammer websites.

Well, since then, Lycos has enjoyed a hefty kick of negative publicity. Aside from the fact that the website was hacked shortly after, and then major Internet backbones were denying access to the IP address used to host www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com, the website now appears "dead in the water".

Currently, the site simply exists as a graphic with "Stay Tuned" underneath - a death knell to corporate vigilante behaviour?

Posted at 10:26 PM
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December 02, 2004

It's taken a while for them to catch up, but Microsoft have finally released their own take on blogs, with MSN Spaces.

It'll be interesting to see how this impacts the general blogosphere, not least because MSN's wide accessibility means that it could help introduce a whole new generation of bloggers to the internet - just as it's messenger and community software helped introduce people to the more interactive aspects of the internet.

Posted at 01:09 PM
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